---
title: Lean as a skeleton, trembling with cold, and hunger, the old man was… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Lean as a skeleton, trembling with cold, and hunger, the old man was clinging with all his thoughts to his money. Who acts: old man, footman. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, A Story, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, A Story, sentence 56

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Lean as a skeleton, trembling with cold, and hunger, the old man was clinging with all his thoughts to his money.

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**Who acts:** old man, footman · **What happens:** tremble, cling, think · **To what, where:** hunger

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, A Story. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old man, footman), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg27200:2:56
# text = Lean as a skeleton, trembling with cold, and hunger, the old man was clinging with all his thoughts to his money.
1	Lean	lean	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
2	as	as	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	skeleton	skeleton	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
6	trembling	tremble	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	1	advcl	_	_
7	with	with	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	cold	cold	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	hunger	hunger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nsubj	_	_
16	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
17	clinging	cling	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	11	acl	_	_
18	with	with	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
19	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	21	det:predet	_	_
20	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	21	nmod:poss	_	_
21	thoughts	thought	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	obl	_	_
22	to	to	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
23	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	24	nmod:poss	_	_
24	money	money	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tremble** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  | with cold | vn modes\_of\_being\_with\_motion-47.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **cling** | past · progressive | the old man | hunger *not said here* |  |  |  | with footman's thoughts; to footman's money | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location hunger=Theme |
| 3 | **think** |  | footman |  |  |  |  |  | nom thought «cognition transitive»: poss=agent |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 27200 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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